On 28 October at 17:00, the exhibition World Press Photo 2026 will open at the Lviv Palace of Arts — a showcase of the winning works of the international photojournalism and documentary photography competition of the same name. The project in Lviv is being implemented by Odesa Photo Days Festival together with the Institute of Cultural Strategy and the Lviv Palace of Arts.
This exhibition will be held in Lviv for the first time, while since 2023 the showcase has already been hosted in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa and Lutsk. An independent jury selected works that highlight war, political and social events, migration, climate change and other global processes in different regions of the world.
The founder and director of Odesa Photo Days Festival, member of the World Press Photo 2023 jury Kateryna Radchenko emphasises that these images not only record events, but also make it possible to talk about professional standards, ethics and responsibility in photojournalism.
The director of the Institute of Cultural Strategy Yuliia Khomchyn underlines that the Lviv venue of World Press Photo will become a space for an open conversation about how the stories presented relate to Ukrainians and what responsibility means to us. She notes that the competition works often show the consequences of human irresponsibility — wars, violence, indifference to people and the environment — while the very act of documenting is an expression of responsibility and the preservation of memory. This is precisely why the exhibition resonates with the city programme “Responsibility to Be / Відповідальність бути”.
Practical information
The exhibition will run at the Lviv Palace of Arts (17 Mykola Kopernyk Street) from 28 October to 22 November. It will be open from Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00 to 19:00. The opening will take place on 28 October at 17:00. Admission is free, and media representatives are asked to obtain accreditation in advance.
The organisers have also announced ticket prices: a full admission ticket costs UAH 200, and a concession ticket — UAH 100. Media contacts are the communications manager of the Institute of Cultural Strategy, Iryna Shutka (csi.lviv.info@gmail.com), and PR and communications manager of Odesa Photo Days Festival, Danylo Boiko (thephotodays@gmail.com).
About the World Press Photo 2026 contest
The 2026 contest received 57,376 entries from 3,747 photographers from 141 countries, setting a record for the number of submissions. The global exhibition tour opened on 24 April 2026 at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, and over the course of the year the winning stories are being shown at more than 60 venues worldwide.
Ukrainian photographer Yevhen Maloletka won in the Single Image category for the European region with his work “Russian attack on Kyiv”. The photograph shows a woman near a destroyed building after the shelling on 24 April 2025, when 13 people were killed and about 90 were injured. This is Maloletka’s second distinction in this competition.
Among other topics addressed by the authors are personal stories of families and individuals, social transformations, the situation of women in patriarchal societies, the life of local communities and the events that matter to them.
The annual staging of the exhibition in Ukraine is made possible by the ongoing support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It was in the Netherlands in 1955 that the World Press Photo Foundation was established, with a mission to develop photojournalism, uphold high professional standards and promote the free exchange of information.
About the World Press Photo Foundation
The World Press Photo Foundation is a global platform that brings together photojournalists, documentary photographers and a wide audience around truthful visual storytelling. The organisation supports visual art through its annual contest, exhibitions, educational programmes and archive. Each year, World Press Photo exhibitions are held at more than 80 venues around the world. The foundation’s strategic partners are the Dutch Postcode Lottery and Fujifilm Corporation.
Context in Lviv
The initiators and main organisers of the World Press Photo project in Ukraine in 2023 and 2024 are Odesa Photo Days Festival, and all exhibitions are supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine.
The city programme “Відповідальність бути / Responsibility to Be” was created for Lviv’s participation in the “European Capital of Culture 2030” competition. Although the city took second place, Lviv continues to implement the programme that was developed. To support cultural projects in 2025–2030, the Lviv City Council and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation signed a memorandum of cooperation. Coordination of the implementation of Lviv’s Cultural Development Strategy is carried out by the Institute of Cultural Strategy — a municipal institution that is also involved in organising the Lviv World Press Photo exhibition.